Hindsight is 20/20

Megan

Posted
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 3:05 am

By Megan Huston

By the end of my senior year of high school, I had gotten into quite a few quarrels with my basketball coach. Unlike any of the other seniors on the team who had been coached by her since their junior year, she had coached me since my freshman year when I was called up to play varsity. I disagreed with many of her choices on trivial matters and sometimes we didn’t get along as well as a coach and “star athlete” should.

She yelled at me more in my four years of high school ball than I’d like to admit. There were practices were I questioned why I was even there.

I wanted to quit during those practices where it felt like we never touched a ball, mainly because we didn’t. I wanted to quit during those practices where I kept messing up and she kept pointing it out. In those moments, I hated basketball, and if we’re being honest, in those moments, I hated her. During those moments I asked myself what kind of coach makes you want to quit the sport you love? And the answer I came up with was simple: a great one.

My high school basketball coach pushed my teammates, and me and not everyone was ready for that, or better yet, not everyone could handle that. Her tactics could be questionable to some. I mean, “yelling” at a parent’s precious little baby girl because she messed up is a new concept in today’s world of sports. Regardless of how much I might have hated her during those grueling practices, I knew they had to be done. Let’s face it, there have to be bad practices. There has to be some kind of pressure because games aren’t stress free. She said the hardest working players would play and there was never a time I thought that she went back on her word.

Basketball is a rollercoaster, there are ups and downs, twists and turns but through it all she was there to make me better. She taught me as much about the game of basketball as she did about life. Looking back I realize she was not the coach I deserved, but she was without a doubt the coach I needed.

Megan Huston is the sports editor for The Meteor. She can be reached at (936) 348-3505 or sports@madisonvillemeteor.com.